With all the hype, it’s hard to know whether an overlanding rig is actually worth it. But I suspect it might be.
Mack Hogan
By all measures, I should be the prime candidate for overlanding. I love vehicles and the adventures they enable. I’m on a quest to see as many national parks as possible, I have a job that allows me to try out different equipment and report on its usefulness, and I already own a good example of the best overlanding platform ever built. There’s only one problem: I’m not sure if overlanding is, at this point, an over-hyped fad.
I can say conclusively that heading out into our Great American Wild with your truck and camping equipment is among life’s greatest pleasures. The National Parks, National Forests, and Bureau of Land Management holdings that dominate the American West are some of the greatest public-access lands on this planet, available to us with little effort and at little if any cost. Few things put the mind at ease like a night on natural land, a bedroom beneath the stars.
Mack Hogan
Yet with any hobby, there is what I like to call an Equipment Illusion. That is, in a society which has monetized every desire and impulse, the intentional misdirection that says the hobby is mostly about your equipment and less about enjoying the activity itself and learning along the way. Sports cars, as a hobby, buy in to the Equipment Illusion. The number of people who continuously upgrade their car while they become ever-more incapable of extracting that performance is staggering.
I’m worried that overlanding is ripe for the same problem. Because while I’d like to upgrade my 2004 LX470 for the task, I’m already starting to get queasy looking at just how deep this rabbit hole goes. If I want to make it a good overlander, the information out there suggests I spend thousands of dollars just to prep for a day trip. If I did that, surely companies would offer up lots of equipment just for exposure, and by giving press to everything that arrives in the mail, I’d contribute to the Equipment Illusion.
Mack Hogan
No, I want to start small. Because for the day-trip camps I’ve done so far, my stock LX and Coleman tent have been fine. Off-road, I’ve never got within spitting distance of the Lexus’ limits. Rather than raising the ceiling of what it can do, I want to raise the floor of what it can handle. So instead of lifting it, I want to get some all-terrain tires and decent recovery gear to ensure I’ll be able to get out alone. I don’t need to swap out the diffs and suspension components yet, but I will need some external fuel storage and a full-size spare of any tire I bring. I’ll never put it through enough sand or water to require a snorkel, but accessory lights will help.
Those upgrades seem worth it even for an amateur. I’m confident that I’m not overdoing it, because if I intend to spend any time off-road, those things are necessary. Where I’m more conflicted is on the living side of the overlanding equation, where you have to sort out where you sleep and what you bring.
Mack Hogan
The Instagram bros say you need a rooftop tent, an awning, an in-car fridge, a drawer storage system, external storage, and an upgraded accessory electrical system. The simpler version is a tent, a cooler, and whatever else I can throw in the cargo area. Most of what I read suggests that all of these upgrades are worth it, but I have to wonder how many nights you have to spend out on the trail before a $3000 rooftop tent offsets the cost of its $300 on-ground brethren.
I suppose there’s only one real way to find out. To make sense of it all, I’m going to try to build my ideal overlanding rig. I’m going to lean on the community and my contacts to figure out what is worth testing. If a company sends a sample to test for the LX. I’ll tell you directly whether the product is worth it. At the end of the project, my goal is to know what you really need to enjoy an overland adventure and what’s a part of the Equipment Illusion.
Mack Hogan
Keyword: I'm Not Sure If Overlanding Is a Fad, But I'm Going to Find Out